Tristan Tzarathustra

10.12.14

Imagine Tristan Tzara and the Dali Lama sitting down for a conversation about poetry, art, dada; the Lama says all is karma, Tzara all is Dada, Lama says all is incarnation, Tzara says all is writing, Lama smiles and saying all is meditation contemplation and the 4 noble truths of the Buddha, Tzara laughs Pulling off his monocle throws his pen or typewriter, or keyboard in the air; all is the way it falls and the artist arranges it with imagination.

Conversation ends : they get up and hug. each goes her own path.

every one is fine . Live and let Live.------------------------------- Poetry is a way to live (and let live).

30.11.14

I ' ll elaborate more on this series of observations and comments in an upcoming broadcast .

______________ 1 . to suggest Tzara is the originator of specific
points in DeleuzeoGuattarian concept machinery is not to lessen the
value of them.

2. Nor is to suggest or open the 'paranoid'
debate about false influence albeit there is the question of false
pretenders versus the just plain old type of pretender pretence,
conceit, concetta , ie. the concept at hand ...

3.
Surely Tzara's 1918 manifesto not to my knowledge ever mentioned by
either Felix Guattari or Deleuze. Had they read it? again I post a
question to which I have no answer.

4 To state
that Tzara arrived at the ideas prior to Guattari and Deleuze is not
even unusual . He lived before them both and was already entangling
himself in the grand debates of philosophy, poetry and life.

5. This is just a quick thumbnail sketch of what I which to discuss in a future broadcast on this blog.

6.
My points are not to be taken literally but are points of departure and
little ziggaggies around these ideas which have become a little stale

in the stinky offices of philosophy _______________a little outside air as they say.

_____________________ The Tzara machine was always good at injecting that .

28.9.14

Einstein explains that the Africanmask does not symbolize but, rather,

is

the god, and that consequently it‘signiﬁes nothing’, we could imaginethe Jewish mysticism of the trans-ﬁxing but unknowable divinity displaced into avant-garde Afri-canism, and into the ecumenicalagreement amongst the dadas thatdada too ‘signiﬁes nothing.’

55

In fact,after dada turned gangrenous, Tzarainvoked Taoism in discussing themeanings of ‘nothing’ at the WeimarConstructivist Congress in 1922,

56

but that may have been in partbecause Taoism could be used to mask any attribution of speciﬁcally Jewishmysticism through the rhetoric of animpersonal dissolution of the self.Jewish mysticism, Einstein’s under-standing of African sculpture, Taoismand dada, could mask, frame, or alle-gorize one another.To return to Tzara’s arrival inParis: Everling, in whose apartmenthe stayed, remarked upon his prolif-eration of papers, his endless sending and receiving of mail, to the point that thepolice were tipped off by the post ofﬁce and made enquiries, suspecting espio-nage. This, too, seemed absurd. Of course Tzara’s tactic of sending dada materialto everyone of inﬂuence or interest everywhere has left him susceptible to thecharge of being a mere self-promoter, rather than the high-minded

seeker of like-minded men

he claimed to Breton in their earlycorrespondence.

57

Indeed, Everlingspeciﬁcally remarked on Tzara’s harnessing of a supple and tenacious intelligenceto an ‘adaptive Semitic mentality’ devoted to the furthering of his cause as a‘virus’.

58

Troublingly, this

adaptive

Semitic mentality was a truism otherwise setout in the infamous

Protocols of the Elders of Zion

, translated into French in 1920 andreferring to the supposed Jewish strategy of concealment by adaptation to themores of the larger culture, particularly in order to manipulate the press.

59

Tzara’s proliferating papers also serve as a prolix demonic double to Breton’selegant romance of ‘leaving no trace’ (for which courage Breton was speciﬁcally applauded by Jacques Rivie`re, implicitly against Tzara, when

NRF

was trying tomake dada an indigenous, French, literary form).

60

By 1922 Tzara ended up exiledfrom his own dada. Thrilling in print and letters, a giant at a remove – ‘I think about you as I’ve never before thoughtof anyone’, Breton had once written – Tzarawas a disappointing mail-order bride.

61

When Tzarawas ﬁrst unveiled at the dada Matine´e of 23 January 1920, he readin a grating voice. Anticipating the embarrassment of his accent, he had itmasked by offstage electric bells manned by Breton and Aragon.

62

But his ﬂam-

8 Man Ray

, Untitled rayograph

, in

Les Champs De´li-cieux

, Paris, 1922. Gelatin silver print,22.2

Â

17.2cm. Photo: reproduced with thepermission of SODRAC.

FAIRE DE SON HISTOIRE UNE BOUCLE (NOIRE)

153

&

ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2009

Einstein explains that the Africanmask does not symbolize but, rather,

is

the god, and that consequently it‘signiﬁes nothing’, we could imaginethe Jewish mysticism of the trans-ﬁxing but unknowable divinity displaced into avant-garde Afri-canism, and into the ecumenicalagreement amongst the dadas thatdada too ‘signiﬁes nothing.’

55

In fact,after dada turned gangrenous, Tzarainvoked Taoism in discussing themeanings of ‘nothing’ at the WeimarConstructivist Congress in 1922,

56

but that may have been in partbecause Taoism could be used to mask any attribution of speciﬁcally Jewishmysticism through the rhetoric of animpersonal dissolution of the self.Jewish mysticism, Einstein’s under-standing of African sculpture, Taoismand dada, could mask, frame, or alle-gorize one another.To return to Tzara’s arrival inParis: Everling, in whose apartmenthe stayed, remarked upon his prolif-eration of papers, his endless sending and receiving of mail, to the point that thepolice were tipped off by the post ofﬁce and made enquiries, suspecting espio-nage. This, too, seemed absurd. Of course Tzara’s tactic of sending dada materialto everyone of inﬂuence or interest everywhere has left him susceptible to thecharge of being a mere self-promoter, rather than the high-minded

seeker of like-minded men

he claimed to Breton in their earlycorrespondence.

57

Indeed, Everlingspeciﬁcally remarked on Tzara’s harnessing of a supple and tenacious intelligenceto an ‘adaptive Semitic mentality’ devoted to the furthering of his cause as a‘virus’.

58

Troublingly, this

adaptive

Semitic mentality was a truism otherwise setout in the infamous

Protocols of the Elders of Zion

, translated into French in 1920 andreferring to the supposed Jewish strategy of concealment by adaptation to themores of the larger culture, particularly in order to manipulate the press.

59

Tzara’s proliferating papers also serve as a prolix demonic double to Breton’selegant romance of ‘leaving no trace’ (for which courage Breton was speciﬁcally applauded by Jacques Rivie`re, implicitly against Tzara, when

NRF

was trying tomake dada an indigenous, French, literary form).

60

By 1922 Tzara ended up exiledfrom his own dada. Thrilling in print and letters, a giant at a remove – ‘I think about you as I’ve never before thoughtof anyone’, Breton had once written – Tzarawas a disappointing mail-order bride.

61

When Tzarawas ﬁrst unveiled at the dada Matine´e of 23 January 1920, he readin a grating voice. Anticipating the embarrassment of his accent, he had itmasked by offstage electric bells manned by Breton and Aragon.

62

But his ﬂam-

8 Man Ray

, Untitled rayograph

, in

Les Champs De´li-cieux

, Paris, 1922. Gelatin silver print,22.2

Â

17.2cm. Photo: reproduced with thepermission of SODRAC.

FAIRE DE SON HISTOIRE UNE BOUCLE (NOIRE)

153

&

ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2009

boyant rolling of ‘r’s seemed to sum him up:

63

his fricatives clacked like falseteeth and he made self-portraits out of sibilants, as the very fabric of his name,suitably abbreviated by Aragon into ‘Trtz’

Germaine Everling reported that Breton would ﬂee to an adjoining room withgrated teeth whenever Tzara started to recite,

67

and Aragon said that Tzara had tobe taught to say even ‘dada’ in a French way.

68

A paradox of this is that theraucous sounds of dada were to be, in Paris, pronounced correctly. Something of Tzara’s being wrong-footed in Paris dada relied on the fact that, by being foreign,his subversions of language were not ﬁrst grounded in an inviolable French.

69

Forhis ﬁrst Paris performance, Tzara came on to the stage reading one of Le´onDaudet’s speeches to the Chamber of Deputies.

70

While there is an clear irony tothe recitation of any politician’s speech in a dada context, there was a particularirony to the choice of Daudet (whoever made the choice), as Daudet as editor of

Action Franc ¸aise

had notoriously promoted a

Protocols-of-Zion

-inﬂected fear of Jewishinﬁltration of economic, political and cultural institutions, and the press.

71

Thatis, Daudet provided a perfectly negative frame for Tzara’s debut.Within Paris dada Tzara ultimately came up against this generic set of xenophobic and anti-Semitic predispositions. When the literary arbiters Andre´Gide and Jacques Rivie`re praised dada in

NRF

, it was the dada of those ‘legitimateheirs’ of French culture – Aragon and Breton – whose work in language they found admirable or even mentionable. The dada project was the necessary ruin of ‘

notre

Verbe’; the ‘notre’ signifying ‘French’.

72

When Gide acidulously found thatthe two syllables of ‘dada’ had a ‘sonorous inanity’ and ‘absolute insigniﬁcance’he could attribute the origins of this distasteful term to those ‘strangers’ whoimport mediocrity and stagnation into French culture. These strangers include‘the inventor of dada’: young, charming, a foreigner, a – Jew! (‘I knew it,’ Gideassures the reader, signalling that such a character could only be a Jew). Worse:‘They tell me he doesn’t sign with his real name, and I’d easily believe that dadatoo is nothing but a pseudonym.’

73

Dada too is a Jew with an assumed name. TheGide point of view raises the problem that dada as avant-gardism could be alle-gorized by reference to that pernicious fraudulent account of internationalJewish conspiracy, the

Protocols of the Elders of Zion

: dada as a programme of demoralization and as subversion of all social institutions, relying on deliberatedisinformation and a hidden, parasitic, use of the press. Such spurious preceptsattributed to the Elders of Zion, as ‘no morality inpolitics’, ‘one must sow anarchy amongst the masses’, ‘power and hypocrisy’, and ‘a senseless, dirty, anddisgusting literature’,

74

could be aligned with Tzara’s dada manifestos’ excoria-tions of morality, sense and logic.

75

On 1 September 1919 an anonymous note (immediately understood to be theeditor Jacques Rivie`re’s) appeared in

Nouvelle Revue Franc ¸aise

[

NRF

], emphasizing the‘German origins’ of dada. This was a familiar echo of the rightist Frenchnationalist rhetoric crucial to Maurice Barre`s, who lumped the Jew with theHun.

76

Breton immediately informed Tzara of the note.

77

Tzara was apparently too weary, or too familiar, with this kind of rhetoric, to respond directly toRivie`re’s dig directly (‘I ordinarily never reply, outof laziness, to such stuff’),

78

butin a long letter to Breton, on 21 September, he outlined his views: ‘Today one does

tristan tzara wrote[1917] “psychoanalysis is a
dangerous disease, it puts to sleep the anti-objective impulses of man
and systematizes the bourgeoisie” but it’s just very hard for me to
understand what he means. dada is outward, psychoanalysis is inward. are
they really in conflict? thoughts please?

________________________________________
Tzara wrote this manifesto in the same city where Jung, Binswanger and others were developing their pyschoanalytic creed and practive ..... its always better to read freud than jung \ its never good to read jung or freud and especially good not read either of them

or their scaming followers

the cons on planes trains boats

flying round the world while people are dying in wars

theyre flying around the world babbling jerkiing off eating drinking an d screwing day and night

the cons the cons the scammers all using the big name guns to get their yayas off

___________________

Tristan Tzara was a poet doctor Dada never went to a conference in his life . he was not an academic cunt nor any other type of cuntwould there were more of him today and yesterday tomorrow tonight.

---------------------------------------- Be a good cunt and think foryourself. find your own (goddam ) idiolects.....

___________Dont be a pillaging cunt

be a dada cunt dump dada too not data but data can be dada at time.s

_______________ Jenny and Franny were frills on the dill . seeing the truth of the haze on the halo of her middle crown and girth. there was no protest on the suspicious calm reddening the sky nor the earthward glance of the firmanent. womens tears are unending . what bigger

thing than this wore the blooming of the suffering jesus his milly mary tied down by the restless? .